Together Forever
by OldestOfTheYoung
Summary: After waking up dead young Emma Steele is taken in by the only people who can seem to see and hear her. Of course this leads to trouble for all involved, and what of this strange ruling that she is nothing less than an Angel? What then?
1. Death

**Death**

I was dead. There was nothing more mind-blowing, more absolutely horrifying than realizing my life was completely and utterly over. There would be no high school graduation, no college, and no future for me. Well, crap.

I thought all of this over as I looked down at my dead, lifeless body and tried to come up with some sort of plan of what I was going to do next. So I was dead. Now what?

Well, it's not like my options were exactly poking me in the eye with their obviousness at the moment.

I couldn't stop staring at my body. I knew it was bad, that it was too scarred and cut up and just plain _wrong_ to be mine, but it was. The brown hair with its own idea of curls and the slight spray of freckles across the bridge of my nose were too obviously mine. Not to mention the small, thin build and the distinct scar of crosses that were burned into my palms when I was still really young by a crazy priest who thought I was cursed. It was so long ago they didn't bother me at all anymore, but it still looked kind of like it should. The eyes were closed, thank goodness, but I knew what color they would be. A crisp steel blue that many of my old friends had said made them feel like I was looking into their Souls.

That thought almost made me laugh, considering.

Considering I was dead.

I shook my head firmly, knowing thoughts like that weren't good ones. I needed to get past that. I knew it already, was completely well-aware of it, and I didn't need to keep thinking about it like it was the end of everything. Even though it kind of was…

Okay, change of thought. _Why_ did I die?

The old guy who had done the autopsy on my body that I was not able to watch had said it was due to a stab wound in my side that made me bleed out. He said there were multiple stab wounds on me, many more than what would've taken to kill me, and that it looked to be a murder of passion.

So I had been murdered.

He also said that I had been cut and bruised up quite a bit over a long amount of time and then allowed to heal, something that he said might have meant I had been held hostage somewhere by someone for a very long time.

That was bad. I didn't remember any of it, not a single moment of torture or pain, but it was obvious from the state of my body that it had happened. A 16-year-old girl didn't just trip on a street curb and end up looking like _that_.

I took a few deep breaths and turned away from my body, trying to think rationally for a few seconds. If I couldn't remember being tortured and killed, what could I remember?

My name, of course. It was-

Was-

Emma Steele. That's it! Okay, that's a pretty good start. Names are important.

Now, I was an only child. Or did I have a brother? No, I was an only child. I'm pretty sure. No parents or at least no memory at all of having them.

So I was alone. I wasn't quite sure how that made me feel. Glad, I guess, that no one else but me was hurt. Disappointed, of course, because that meant no one was going to come and say they knew who I was so I could at least get buried with a name on my headstone.

See, once you die, the things you want tend to be extremely miniscule compared to the things you wanted when you were alive. I mean, it's not like I'll be able to use a new pair of sneakers now that I'm deceased. And a decent pair of gloves seems pretty useless now that nothing really touches me anymore. Well, I haven't actually got up the nerve to try to touch something yet, but that's not important right now. It could be later, but not now. What was important right now was figuring out what to do now that I was dead. I had obviously not planned out anything before leaving my body forever, and I had no real idea where I even was.

Yeah, the old guy who had dissected my body made me think I was in the morgue, but other than that I was stuck with some pretty limited info. He had a normal accent from my area, so I wasn't in some sort of foreign country or something.

I was dead. I was completely and totally a ghost. No one could see me or hear me, and I was still stuck on the issue of if they could feel me if I walked through them. Which I was not about to try doing. Not now. Not yet. Not so soon after… whatever the Hell had happened to me.

I had grown so used to the old guy who had dissected me earlier that I had pretty much just blocked out that he was there in the room with me. I could hear his breathing and the sound of rustling papers as he sifted through paperwork, but other than that he didn't make any other sounds. I had learned that he had a sweet habit of reading information aloud to himself, but a lot of what he said I didn't understand. Only "stab wounds", "tortured", and "terribly painful". I had died in a worst state then I could have ever imagined.

I hadn't moved from my body's side in a long time. I just couldn't bear leaving its side. I had no idea what they were going to do with it, and the fact that it had been mine for 16 years made me not want to see them just throw it out like trash.

"I'm so sorry. Your last moments of life must have been terrible." the old man who had cut me up and taken out my insides murmured, gazing down at my bruised and broken face sadly. Then he reached down and pulled the white sheet that had been covering me up like a blanket up over my head. I watched him numbly as he went over to the only door in the room and opened it, two rather buff men in matching uniforms coming in. They headed straight for my body and picked it up, taking it out of the room without a word as if they had done it dozens of times. They probably had.

Watching them take my body away from me snapped me out of my numb self-pity, and I screamed and tried to get them to stop. To put me down, to uncover my face again. I couldn't lose my body. Not like this. Not so soon after leaving it. They couldn't hear me, though. They couldn't see me, either. I screamed and jumped around in front of them, then crying and crawling after them, begging them to put my body down again.

I didn't pay any attention to where I was, just that they were taking my body out of the safe warmth of the building wherever this was and out into the bitter cold. I shuddered as the crisp breeze tugged at me, wrapping my arms around myself as I followed the two men closely as they took my body and put it into the back of a dark car with tinted windows.

Then they got in, started the car up, and were gone. I didn't follow. I couldn't.

I was all alone and freezing, the cold digging through me with fingers of ice that made me shiver and cry softly there on the sidewalk. Snow, as soft as baby duck feathers, pooled around my bare feet and clung to my hair and skin as if I was still alive. I didn't care, though. I was all alone now.

* * *

><p>Author's Notes: Yeah, I know this is silly to post since I need to start up on the next chapters of my other stories, but I couldn't get this out of my head to save my life... terrible pun...<p>

If you have read the first few chapters posted of my other stories here on FF, then you'll notice the main character's name is the same. Yeah, it's my favorite name for a heroine ever. I'll probably end up naming my first daughter Emma just because.

I don't own anything mentioned anywhere in the story, and if you think I do then please notify me so I can double-check and possibly make some changes.


	2. Not Alone

**Not Alone**

"Hey. You there. You still aware?" someone asked, breaking through the aching cold fog that was clogging my mind up.

I opened my eyes slowly and looked up at whoever it was, wondering if they were really talking to me, the dead girl. It was a guy, probably not much older than me, and he was looking right at me. He had bright green eyes that seemed to almost glow out from under his dark wool hat that had dark hair poking out from under it, pretty much his entire outfit dark. Except for his eyes, of course. A small, freezing part of my mind thought he looked fairly handsome, albeit strange talking to someone no one else could see.

"They took me away." I whispered hoarsely, my throat closed up tightly from crying and the cold. I felt like I could barely move an inch and even speaking was almost impossible.

His eyes seemed to flicker even brighter than before (if that was even possible), and he looked down the street in the direction the car had drove off in. Then he looked back at me. His bright eyes held a fair amount of pity, but also determination. "It's freezing out here and unless you want to die a second time then you should follow me." he said, and took a few steps in the opposite direction from the way the car went, turning to wait for me to move after him.

I didn't know what I wanted to do. What would dying again be like? Could I even do that? Would it hurt?

My legs, having decided long ago apparently that I wasn't worth listening to anymore, moved slowly but surely out of the pile of snow that had built up around me and after the boy with the glowing eyes. I closed my eyes briefly, trusting my legs to not lose the boy with me not watching, and tried to clear my head a little bit. It was hard and made me feel very weak, but at least I could think and feel a little bit more than before when I finally gave up and opened my eyes again.

We were now standing in front of a nice, cozy looking building with lights in its large windows promising heat and comfort. The boy with the glowing green eyes was standing at the door, watching me. He didn't look mad to be standing there in the cold waiting for me to get moving again, something that confused me a little bit. Any other guy, I figured, would be mad and irritable to have to be standing in such terrible weather.

The door opened behind him suddenly, very slowly, and a small light flickered in the doorway, bouncing around in the air like a bouncy-ball in slow motion. "She's really new, Jack. I don't think she even knows how to Deform. And the cold has probably gotten to her too much already." the small bouncing light whispered to the guy, and then, right before my tired, aching eyes, it turned into a glowing, slightly–see-through guy. He looked about Glowing Eyes' age, wearing plain light-colored clothes that made his shock of blond hair seem to glow around his head like a halo. His eyes, glowing almost as brightly as Glowing Eyes', were light blue.

"Come on. Just a few more steps." Glowing Eyes told me, sounding like he was trying to convince a puppy to come to him. He even bent down a little bit and motioned with his arm for me to come to him. To come to the door.

I couldn't. My legs, losing their will to move, were like blocks under me. I was still holding myself, my arms more like solid steel then flesh. I was as cold as the snow, and my sense of feeling was gone. Glowing Eyes' friend was right. The cold had gotten to me already.

I felt so bitter, so guilty for wasting Glowing Eyes' time, that a tear, warm and wet, ran down my cheek, giving me briefly a sense of feeling along its trail again before the snow stole it away. I wanted to just go away, to find my body, and to never go anywhere else again. I hated this coldness. I hated all of this.

I hated being dead.

I was so alone…

"What are you two waiting for? An invitation?" a gravely old male voice grumbled, a man who looked to be around his early 50s brushing by the two boys and coming down the steps of the house to stand in front of me. He was a little taller than me, but not by much. He gave off such a sense of power, though, that he could've been 20 feet tall. He had a thick blanket in his arms, and as he spreading open and went to toss it around my shoulders I felt like I was going to break.

I was going to shatter like the ice falling from the sky and finally be free from all of this coldness.

But I didn't.

The blanket touched me, immediately sending shots of heat through my back into my core. My legs, barely able to hold my own weight, crumpled under the weight of the blanket as well. The old man caught me, though, and with an ease that made me feel like I was as light as a feather scooped my up into his arms and started up the stairs to the house again.

"It's going to be perfectly alright, sweetheart. We just have to get some heat back into you." the old man murmured to me under his breath in a huffed tone, his breath brushing off a flake of snow that had clung to my lips.

I watched the flake of snow float around for a few seconds before the heat coming from the house killed it, and then I fell asleep.

I hadn't been asleep in such a long time…

* * *

><p>When I opened my eyes I felt like I was air and heat was just constantly moving through me. It came out of my lungs as I breathed and echoed through my bones like drum beats. It took a while for my eyes to finally focus, and when they did I felt strangely comfortable. My sense of feeling eased back into being as if it was scared to be shoved away by the cold again and I felt the softness of a thick blanket wrapped around me, heating pads surrounding my feet which I was guessing faced the worst of the cold.<p>

"It's good to see you awake again, sweetheart. Can you speak? Can you feel again? Your temperature has been brought back to normal again, which is good, but we aren't aware of the damage yet. Can you nod if you understand me?" the old man asked me, his slightly wrinkled face swimming into my line of sight.

I tried to remember what it felt like to nod and tried my best to do it, pleased to find that I was able to move a little bit again. He seemed just as happy as me at the improvement in me.

"Very good. Now, I'm going to remove the heating pads we had put on your feet so they don't burn, okay?" Once again, I nodded weakly that I understood. The blaring heat around my feet subsided and I sighed slightly from my nose, feeling a little bit better now that I wasn't afraid of catching on fire. "You can call me John, alright? You were found by Jack, one of my students. You might be aware of Max, but if not that's okay. He is currently keeping your mind together, but when you can do it on your own he will let go again, okay?" he told me, shifting the blankets around my body a little bit. I felt like I weighed a ton and a half, and wondered why I was even here still. Hadn't I broken?

_Not yet, Miss. Don't ask me how you managed to convince yourself to stay relatively together long enough for me to catch all of your pieces, because I don't know. _The voice, definitely not mine, seemed to echo through my mind from all directions. It sounded strangely familiar and not that scary, and after a while I stopped panicking and decided I needed to go back to sleep. I didn't think I had ever slept that much before.

_Death is tiresome work. Trust me. _


	3. Forgotten Time

**Forgotten Time**

A loud noise startled me out of my sleep and I twisted in my cocoon of blankets, groaning softly and trying to shift off the heavy weight that surrounded my mind. It fell away easily like the left over strands of a net and I sighed, going still as I relaxed in the comforting warmth again. The startling noise echoed again in the air around me and I pried my eyes open groggily, looking over at the tall grandfather-clock that was ringing off the hour. Its sound was almost remorseful, like the sad hooting of a lonely owl. I got up slowly and walked across the cool wooden floor to it, gazing up at its glass face. The blankets I left at the couch I had woken up on, the coldness of the dim house not bothering me as much as the snow outside had.

The clock was beautiful and old, older than maybe even the man named John. The minute and hour hands on the clock were made of a very dark, very delicate wood that stood out a lot on the smooth light-colored face. The numbers were all made of metal, each curve making them look almost like they were made of whipped cream laid out on a white cake. Tiny jewels sparkled along the edge of the face, each one seeming to almost wink at me playfully.

The clock was beautiful.

"…I think the clock must've waked her up." someone said quietly, their deep voice gently pulling me out of my still-foggy mind. I glanced over and saw that it was just the man called John and then looked back up at the clock, its beauty and complexity drawing away all of my attention.

I wanted to touch the clock. The urge was sudden and strong, and before I knew what I was doing I had reached up my hand and had touched my fingertips to the cage of the clock that held its swinging heart. A shock like sticking your finger in a wall socket blew through my hand and I yanked it back instinctively, looking down at the slight redness on my fingers that was already going away and then back up at the clock. It had shocked me. Why?

"It's Sealed so we don't accidently get pulled into it without knowing how to get back out. It didn't mean to hurt you." a soft voice murmured in my ear, tickling me. It sounded like the voice that had been in my head the night before; the voice of Glowing Eyes' friend.

I curled my fingers into my palm as if I could catch the slight pain I had felt, and then I turned my head away from where I knew the three of them were standing and looked out the window that overlooked the street, watching as more snow drifted softly down from the sky soundlessly. I blinked and I was standing at the window now, somehow there even though I didn't remember walking there at all. I watched the snow fall for a while, watching each star-shaped flake make its way down to rest among the others on the ground, remembering the coldness of them pooling at my feet as I stood watching the two uniformed men take my body away. I was dead now. Just a ghost. No could see me or hear me or touch me.

Wait. That wasn't true. The man John, Jack or Glowing Eyes, and the other Ghost, Max, could see and hear and touch me. I wasn't dead to them.

I frowned and turned around to face them, crossing my arms over my slightly-small chest and trying to think of what to say or do now. Finally, something came to me. "Who the heck _are_ you?" I asked, knowing for a fact that they were not like other people.

One, they could clearly see me.

Two, they seemed to want to help me.

And three, one of them was dead but no one seemed to care much.

"How about you answer that question first, Little Miss." the slightly-see-through guy, Max, smirked, copying my pose. I scowled but didn't put my arms down self-consciously. I was not about to let him dictate what I do.

"How about your name first, okay? We can take this slow if you want." John said gently, taking a seat on the couch, and motioned for me to take a seat as well. The blankets of my cocoon were moved to make room.

I took a seat and flushed, not remembering. After a few seconds it came to me out of the fog in my head, and I calmed down a little bit again. "Emma Steele." I told him, and he smiled and nodded that I was doing great.

"Do you know how old you are, Emma?"

"… 16." I answered, not completely sure. It seemed like a good, familiar age, though.

"Okay. Now, this might be hard. Do you remember what you were doing before Jack found you?"

That memory brought tears to my eyes but I quickly wiped them away. No need to cry any more than I already had. "They were taking my body away in a car. I couldn't stop them."

"And were you with your body the whole time before they took it away?"

"Yeah."

"Jack says he found you standing outside in front of the morgue. Does that sound like the place you were?"

"Yeah. There was this older guy who took my stuff down in some basement or something. Everything was really clean."

"Took your stuff?"

That made me flush and I glared a little bit at him through more tears. "My heart. My lungs. My insides! He cut me up and took it all out and then sewed me back up again!" I snapped, and pulled my legs up to my chest and hugged them, swallowing a sob.

"I'm so sorry. That must have been hard for you." he murmured after a while, and I raised my head up a little bit and looked at him, my anger draining away to be replaced with a thick sadness.

"Not as hard as I thought it would be. And it's not like he was all Jack the Ripper about it." I shrugged, and a small smile pulled at his lips as he realized I was trying to smooth out my snappiness from earlier.

"I'm sure you have many questions, Emma, but please try to understand that there is a very limited amount of answers we can give you. You are more than welcome to ask as many questions as you like, but please be aware that not all of them are ones we can answer at the moment. Maybe later, but not now." he told me gently, and I nodded and carefully put my legs down, calming myself almost completely.

"What day is it?" I asked, feeling weak and very young as I looked up into his gray eyes. I didn't like feeling weak, but it wasn't as if I had much of a choice.

"It is January 12th, 2010." he answered, and I nodded and swallowed and looked away from him so he wouldn't see the tear that had ran down my cheek. January 12th. I might not have had any memories of my life before I died, but I knew that it sure wasn't January of 2010 when I died. Not even close. How much had I missed?

* * *

><p>Chapter three is up and running!<p>

I own nothing!


	4. Dominic

**Dominic**

"So all you have to do is hold this in your hand and focus on it. It's hard, so don't expect it right away." Max told me, curling my fingers around a small rock he had brought from 'his room'. John had said he had some business to attend to, informing the Order (which were really important people who could see Ghosts and other things) about me not Moving On, and he had left Jack is charge until he got back. Max had decided that since he was a Ghost as well he would be the perfect teacher for me, helping me learn how to do Ghostly things and whatnot, so we were now sitting on the ground in the middle of the room I had woken up in. Blankets were pooled out on the ground under us so the cold didn't bother us. Jack just sat in the corner next to the grandfather clock and watched silently, looking only slightly interested.

"What am I supposed to be expecting exactly?" I asked, a little worried. Max had that smile that made him look like he was planning to blow something up at any moment, something that was not exactly reassuring. I couldn't remember where I had seen that look before, but that wasn't really something I was looking into at the moment.

"Just focus!" he grinned, squeezing my hand around the stone before he scooted a few inches away.

I glanced at Jack, something I had just picked up since waking up. He nodded ever so slightly, giving me the cue that it was okay, and I focused on the small stone in my palm. It was cool and smooth, slightly marbled with darker stone. I imagined myself sinking in through the outer shell of it and finding a little ball of energy in the center, and then I imagined making that little ball of energy growing and flooding out of the rock like a dam breaking. The rock suddenly burst into white flames and I yelped and dropped it, afraid to get burned. The rock landed on the blanketed ground with a soft thud, no longer on fire.

"It's called Ghost Flame. We can only do it with small rocks when we're doing it by ourselves, something about using our own energy to increase that in the rock, and it makes it light up. It's not actually hot, so don't worry about burning yourself." Max chuckled, picking the rock back up. He tossed it in the air and caught it again, making it burst into bright flames between his fingers.

"We can still get burnt?" I asked, checking my hand just in case.

"Well, yeah. John says it's because we didn't Move On like other people when we died that makes us special. It's like a second life. Things like hot and cold still affect us, most of the time even more than normal, and we can still get hurt. Not to mention dying again. No one is really sure how it works, but when a Ghost gets hurt enough to die something happens and they just disappear. Forever. Most people like to think the Ghosts finally Move On, but no one is really sure." he told me, and tossed me the stone gently before standing up and stretching. "So don't go outside again without proper clothing. It's wicked cold out there this time of year and the last thing anyone needs is for you to become an Emma Popsicle." he sighed, putting one hand on his hip while he shook his finger at me with the other hand like he was my dad or something.

"Yes, Dad." I sighed, rolling my eyes at him as I held the rock in my hand and made it flicker a little bit. I scowled and tried again, and then again, nothing happening.

"Did you break my rock?" Max asked sweetly, standing over me with a devilish look in his bright blue eyes.

"No, don't be ridiculous." I scoffed, slightly impressed with myself for how easy that lie was. I stood up, brushing myself off casually while I kept the rock out of his view.

"She's right, Max. Stop being such a creeper." Jack said, and Max flushed and scowled at his friend, crossing his arms over his chest.

"When's John going to be back?" I asked, grabbing a blanket off of the ground. I sat down on the couch and pulled it around me, still trying in vain to get the rock to light up again.

"As soon as he can. He understands how hard it can be when you first become a Ghost." Jack answered, and I frowned a little bit as I thought about it. They made it sound as if I was some baby animal. Yeah, I was a Ghost and a new one at that, but I was still Emma and I kind of knew how to watch out for myself.

"I'm sorry." I whispered to the rock softly, the words echoing through me like bells. The rock suddenly blazed up so brightly the flames on it reached out and flared around my whole hand, the rock itself vibrating under my fingers with all of the overflowing energy. I closed my eyes and the flames disappeared with a little wisp of light that was quickly gone, the rock just a rock again when I opened my closed fist. "Can I keep it?" I asked Max quietly, feeling suddenly very tired.

"Yes. I have plenty of my own." he answered, and I curled both of my hands around it as if I was praying.

"Where did you get it?" I asked, glancing over at him as he plopped down on the blanketed ground next to me a few feet away. Even though he might sometimes act like a creeper, he was actually pretty respectful when it counted.

"Sometimes, when it's warm, Jack takes me out to the river across town so I can pick out some new ones." he smiled, and Jack in the corner snorted.

"Most of the time he just keeps whining until I go out and reach into that damn river and grab as many rocks as I can before my fingers freeze off from the cold."

Max only pouted at that instead of arguing, and then all of a sudden he went very still, his eyes glazing over like one of the bodies I had seen in the morgue while I had investigated the place. And then, as if he was being pumped up with hot air, he grew a bit and then suddenly darted towards the door, snarling like a wild animal. "Dominic!" he hissed, glaring daggers at the door as the temperature in the room dropped rapidly and the lights all flickered. He looked like he couldn't touch the door, something he seemed to hate because he snapped at Jack to hurry up and open the door.

"Alex, calm down. You're scaring Emma." Jack said calmly, standing up and going over to the door. He rolled his shoulders and sighed before reaching over and opening the door, the sudden blast of cold making me gasp and shudder violently.

"Come on, Emma, let's go to my room. It's warm there." Alex said very gently, sudden kneeling beside me close enough for me to feel the delicate warmth coming off of him.

"I see I might have come at a bad time. Who is your guest?" a rather snotty-looking blonde-haired boy around Jack's age asked, stepping into the room from outside as if he owned the place.

"None of your business." Alex growled, glaring over his shoulder at the other boy as he helped me up to my feet. He grabbed my discarded blanket from the floor and wrapped it around my shaking shoulders before he led me down to the end of the hall where he opened the door and hurried me inside the very warm stuffy bedroom.

"Who was that?" I asked, the heat of the room slowly seeping back into my freezing bones as I looked around. The room was slightly cluttered and dim, like the air in it was too thick to really allow much light to move through it. The bed was stuffed in the far corner and shelves full of books of all sizes covered every available space on the walls.

"A Seer like Jack and John. That's about the only thing they have in common, though. Dominic is a real stuck-up bastard. You do not want to be caught alone with him anywhere at any time if you can help it." Alex sighed, pacing around the room while he scowled angrily. Since he didn't elaborate I guessed that by Seer he meant they could see Ghosts like us unlike normal people.

"I wonder what they're talking about." I said after a while, shuffling over and sitting down on the edge of the bed. I felt tired, but more in the sense that my mind felt tired than my body did.

"They're talking about you, mostly. Where Jack found you and how new you might be." Alex said, coming over to sit down on the bed beside me. "When Jack found me I was really, really close to the edge. Like, one more hour and I'd be gone to that place all forgotten Ghosts go to. He was little and just beginning to understand what being a Seer meant. We exchanged a bit of our Souls, just a bit so I could hold on a bit longer and so he could sense Ghosts and whatnot better than the average Seer. It has its side effects, like us being able to hear what the other hears and whatnot." he said, seeing my look of disbelief and confusion.

"That sounds amazing!" I gasped, and he blushed a little and smiled. The smile didn't last long, though.

"Jack better get that sicko out of here before I blow the house up." he growled softly, glaring at the closed door as if he wanted to murder it.

"Why? What happened?"

"Dominic is just showing a very disturbing interest in you and doesn't seem to realize Jack is _not_ amused." he said grimly, and then he suddenly grabbed me and tossed me back against the corner where the bed met the intersecting walls and scrambled up onto the bed blocking me from the rest of the room. "Don't move. You're still weak, so he could hurt you." he hissed to me when I freaked a bit and struggled against him. The next moment the door burst open with a freezing blast of air and the guy Dominic came strutting in with Jack acting as his very irritated, very silent shadow.

"There's my girl! Newly dead but quick to learn, you said, Jack?" the blonde grinned, trying to get a peek at me from behind Alex's body. "Get out of my way, Ghoul." he sneered at Alex, flicking his hand to the side as if he was flinging off a bug.

"You have no power in this house, Seer. You're nothing but a human within these walls who can see things." Alex said softly, his eyes flickering to a bright bloody red as he looked over his shoulder. His friendly warmth was gone now, replaced by a cold stillness that made me shiver a bit. I didn't understand what had happened to him, but as long as that gaze wasn't directed at me I could live with it.

"Jack-"

"You need to go, Dominic." Jack said softly, his eyes not leaving Alex's as if they were silently communicating. After a few seconds Alex lowered his gaze, leaning towards me a little bit as if he was relaxing minutely.

"I'll be back later, then, to see how our little mouse is settling into this new world. Such a scary place for a little lost mouse." the blonde said, and turned and left after bidding us farewell, smiling politely to Jack as he passed by him even though his eyes were hard as ice.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes: <strong>

I wanted to show how not everyone in the Hidden World are nice and friendly to everyone, and I think Dominic showed that nicely. He's kind of crazy and full of himself.

I wanted to explain a bit of how Alex came to be a part of the little ragtag family, and I figured nothing brings people closer together than the exchange of a piece of your Soul. It changed him, of course, making him into a Ghoul instead of just a Ghost. I'll touch more on _that_ later on.

Hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I am currently working on chapter five so expect it soon. I know I've been impossible lately with my stories, but I just couldn't get into the groove of things at all and I didn't want to maul my poor stories in an excuse to post something up. I think I've found that groove again, so wish me luck!

I don't own anything you might recognize. Literally nothing. If you have anything you need answers about please just PM me, and I'll make sure to give you as much info as I can.


	5. The ComeHere Curse

As soon as we heard the front door slam in Dominic's passing we all relaxed again. Alex moved back away from me and settled down close beside me, his eyes still averted from both Jack and me. Jack sighed and came over and sat on the edge of the bed on my other free side, sweat starting to break out on his brow from the heat.

"Are you alright?" he asked, his bright eyes somehow glowing even brighter if it was possible. I chalked it up to being so attached to Alex who had nearly changed into another creature only moments before.

"Fine." I said, looking away from him. I wasn't really fine, not since it turned out a friend of Jack's wanted to… _harm_ me. I had thought I was safe here and that nobody who could hurt me could come into this house, but obviously I had been wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong.

"You should have punched him, you know." Alex sighed after a thick silence, turning his head back to us so he could smile softly at Jack. His eyes were back to being their soft blue, but he looked very tired.

"You know if I did I would just be arrested and then where would we be?" Jack sighed, shaking his head. "Dominic is a sick bastard, but he is the son of one of the most powerful members of the Order. If I didn't let him in and didn't listen to his sick rambling, then he could have me sent to Haven as a criminal and then John might be removed from the Order. There is nothing we can do that won't blow up in our faces concerning Dominic Finch."

"What's Haven?" I asked, trying to change the subject from the creeper who wanted to hurt me. I wasn't sure I could handle another conversation about how sick-minded and powerful Dominic was without throwing up.

"Well, you know that there are Seers who can communicate and see Ghosts and whatnot. There are also many other unusual types of people, most of them no normal people can see, and they are everywhere. Most of them hide in plain sight, which means they work and live and have little baby monsters just like everyone else. Haven is like our D.C. It's the main capitol for all creatures of the night, and usually only very important people or criminals go there. I've never been there personally, but I've heard that it looks like the child of Heaven and Hell." Alex said, and I shivered at that thought. So it would look safe and inviting while it tortured you with each step?

"When's John going to be back?" I asked, pulling my blanket a little tighter around me. Even though I knew the room was very, very hot my insides still felt a little chilled and I hated it, but the feeling would just not go away. Suddenly I felt as if someone or something was tugging on me from my core and yelped, reaching out to grab Alex and Jack before the tug came again and I was suddenly flying off somewhere very cold and very scary.

I screamed and cried for help, but the tugging never slowed and with everything blurring by me sickeningly I had no idea where I was going or if I'd ever stop moving. It seemed to go on for a long time and then suddenly it felt as if I was slammed downward into something hard and freezing and _dead_. I couldn't move and I couldn't make a sound, but that didn't stop me from continuing to scream and sob in my mind.

I had no idea how long I stayed there in the freezing dead thing that after a while I discovered was the buried remains of my own body, but finally I felt the tug again only this time softer and less painful. It felt as if someone was trying to open up a door above me so I could escape this silent and still Hell, and when I subconsciously felt the door open wide enough for me to squeeze through I bolted up through it and scrambled as far as I could before I finally managed to break the surface and be surrounded by fresh freezing air again.

I sobbed and curled up into a ball, shivering in the snow but not really caring. I was free! _I was free at last!_ I didn't care if I died there in the snow, as long as I never had to experience whatever that torture had been then I could accept it with a smile and open arms.

"Emma!" someone gasped, and I was suddenly lifted up off the ground and surrounded by warmth that felt so good I cried harder. "Emma, child, everything is alright… You're safe now…" whoever was holding me said soothingly, and after a minute or so I was able to calm down enough to open my eyes again and see that it was John.

"J-J-John?" I whispered, my voice very hoarse from screaming for so long.

"Yes it is me, Emma. You're safe now and no one is going to hurt you. Do you remember what happened at all?" he asked, starting to walk with me still in his arms like a small child. I didn't have the strength or the will to protest and just curled up a bit more into his warm chest.

"A tug… A tug on my insides took me from the house. Everything was blurring by and then- and then I was… back in my b-body." I choked out, and shivered violently. Only the shivering didn't stop, and I whimpered softly wondering if whatever had happened was going to be enough to kill me the second time.

"What happened?" someone else asked from very close by, and I turned my head a bit and saw that it was Jack and that John was lowering me into a car beside his Apprentice.

John didn't answer until he had made sure I was comfortable in the car beside Jack and had gone around to the driver's side and had gotten in. "It seems that someone preformed a Come Here curse on Emma and made it so that she would have no choice but to go to wherever they indicated. Since it was her body the pull was too hard for her to fight like it should have been. It was pure luck that I had just learned about the location of where she was buried or else we would not gotten to her in time." he said, starting up the car with a hard twist of his wrist and a glare out the front windshield that would have turned the snow outside into instant steam.

The car ride back home was very quiet after that, and by the time we made it back to the house my shivering had worsened and Jack was holding me tightly to try to give me as much warmth as he could. He looked tortured and his eyes were practically blazing out of his skull, but he didn't say anything until the car came to a stop back in front of the house. "Alex thinks it would be best if Emma slept in his room now. At least for tonight until we can get her room up to a high enough temperature." he told John, his tone sounding almost tired.

"I agree that it would be best for now." John nodded after a few moments of thought, and then he turned slightly and glared back at his Apprentice. "Do not try to communicate with Alex that far away again, young man. It takes too much out of you to be doing it so freely."

"I understand, Master." Jack murmured, and then before Jack could say anything back he got out of the car and headed up to the front door with me in his arms. He opened the door and immediately headed for Alex's room, the house strangely still and silent as if no one was there even though I was sure Alex hadn't been in the car with us. Jack wordlessly settled me into Alex's bed, tucking the blankets around me and making sure I was beginning to warm up again. "You can go to sleep now, Emma. You're safe and you'll be warm again in no time." he assured me quietly, and I closed my eyes obediently and slipped off into the nothingness of sleep that was calling my name. I never saw or heard Alex.

* * *

><p>Author's Note: Sorry for such a terribly long time updating! I had literally hit a wall with this story as thick as the Earth, but I think I've finally got my rythm back! I'd expect a new chapter in a few days...<p>

Just in case anyone gets any ideas this story is completely mine and mine alone and any people/ideas/places/things that seem/sound familiar are simply coincidental and not meant to offend or infuriate. I apologize ahead of time.


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